March light, blackbird and excitement

The Grove at the beginning of March.

After four days of continuous rain or drizzle the weather clears. In Calverley Ground a blackbird sings. On a bench an old man rolls a cigarette and slowly smokes it.

An old person is anyone five years older than you; a middle aged person anyone five years younger and still trying. The young are in one another's arms. I meet an old couple who are neighbours. They are crossing the road outside the convenience store. A big delivery vehicle is pulling out while other traffic waits. "It's all  so exciting isn't it," says Anne.

life snowflakes identity

Neighbours. Probably the two commonest inhabitants of The Grove.

Huge snowflakes glide down outside the window this morning, as big as saucers they seem to be.

Despite snow on the line, I am no more than two minutes late for my meeting with the possessor of two noms de plumes so deeply ingrained that I cannot always remember the real name under which he now blogs. There, sitting in the bar of the Bloggers, Retreat is Barrett Bonden, Lorenzo da Ponte and Roderick Robinson. Problem is that I have always known him as "Robbie" so that for a time I find it difficult to adjust to the shifting spectrum of nomenclature. He, in response to a request which I forget that I made, is wearing his navy blue ship captain's cap. This doesn't make it easier as I cannot  in nearly 50 years recall  seeing him in any form of headgear.   An item on the agenda is to define the short story. It enters both our minds at one point  that maybe we are in the midst of one. After nearly six  amusing hours of failure to define the short story and much else, we part company; he into the bowels of the London tube, and on to the distant Welsh Marches; I to the heights of Waterloo East Station and on to the fleshpots of Tunbridge Wells.

paths, lead, ring dove

Two diverging paths in the Grove.

One of my favourite retracting pencils is Pental's Twist Erase. The big advantage is that there is an eraser at the top end, which you can extend by twisting the barrel. The lead is extended by pressing the top of the eraser, which temporarily releases a grip mechanism within the barrel, allowing gravity to do the rest, until pressure is removed and the grip holds the lead firm again. I have several of these pencils, which I use for drawing and sometimes for writing.
I am particularly fond of the 0.5 mm lead version, in which I use 2b leads. The lead is soft and very fine. The engineering is neat, but there is one drawback. Loading the thin, soft lead, through the wire-thin cone-shaped guide at the point of the pencil, on its way to the grip mechanism, is hazardous. The lead can break and, if it sticks in the guide, the broken piece is very difficult to dislodge and renders the pencil useless.
My problem is to find something thin enough to push through the guide and thereby poke the lead out. But what to use? A pin or a needle is too thick. It was only when I read Barrett Bonden's recent post about fuse boxes and his reference to the reels of fuse wire, which were needed to mend old porcelain fuses, that I hit on the solution.
A visit too an old fashioned electrical shop produces a reel of 5 amp, 10 amp and 15 amp wire. The 10 amp is too thin and the 15 amp too wide, but, like the porridge in the cottage of the three bears, which Goldilocks found neither to hot nor too cold, the 10 amp wire is just right. It is a slow job to dislodge the redundant lead, but with some black fingers and 10 minutes later I see the wire come through the guide, and I have a working pencil, for my labours.

One of my favourite birds is the ring dove with its neat black collar and mist grey plumage. When we were in Spain last year one settled on the balcony of our hotel room and stayed long enough to allow me to photograph it. This morning, Heidi calls me on to the landing. There, right outside window, perched on the wisteria is another ring dove. It stays only for a moment eyeing us with a worried expression, and flies off before I have time to reach for my camera.